Portal:Maps/Selected biography

This Wikipedia page has been superseded by historical
reference.

Note: Did you know entries are now being transcluded directly on the main portal page. However, this page should be retained for historical reference.

edit

Selected biography 1

Portal:Maps/Selected biography/1

Hellenized Egyptian

but no description of his family background or physical appearance exists, though it is likely he was born in Egypt.
Ptolemy was the author of several scientific treatises, three of which have been of continuing importance to later
Greco-Roman world. The third is the astrological treatise known as the Tetrabiblos ("Four books") in which he attempted to adapt horoscopic astrology to the Aristotelian natural philosophy of his day. (read more...)

edit
Selected biography 2

Portal:Maps/Selected biography/2

Star map by Su Song

Song Dynasty
.
Su Song was the engineer of a water-driven
star maps, several terrestrial
maps, as well as a treatise on pharmacology.

edit
Selected biography 3

Portal:Maps/Selected biography/3

Shen Kuo

encyclopedist, poet and diplomat
, among many others.
In his
north pole. Alongside his colleague Wei Pu, Shen accurately mapped the orbital paths of the moon and the planets, in an intensive five-year project that rivaled the later work of the Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe. To aid his work in astronomy, Shen Kuo made improved designs of the armillary sphere, gnomon, sighting tube, and invented a new type of inflow clepsydra
clock.

edit
Selected biography 4

Portal:Maps/Selected biography/4

World map by al-Idrisi

Arab cartographer, geographer and traveller who lived in Sicily, at the court of King Roger II. Muhammad al-Idrisi was born in Ceuta and died in Sicily, or maybe in Ceuta. Al Idrisi claimed that he was a direct descendant of the prophet Muhammad
.
Al-Idrisi's best known work is his map of the world "lawh al-tarsim" (plank of draught), of 1154. He worked on the commentaries and illustrations for eighteen years at the court of King Roger II of Sicily. His map is now known as the 'Tabula Rogeriana', his book as the Geografia. His maps were used extensively during the explorations of the era of the Renaissance like the journeys of Christopher Columbus.

edit
Selected biography 5

Portal:Maps/Selected biography/5

A medieval T-O map

Saint Isidore of Seville (c. 560 – April 4, 636) was Archbishop of Seville for more than three decades and has the reputation of being one of the great scholars of the early Middle Ages. All the later medieval history-writing of Hispania were based on his histories.
Isidore taught in the Etymologiae that the Earth was round. His meaning was ambiguous and some writers think he referred to a disc-shaped Earth; his other writings make it clear, however, that he considered the Earth to be globular. Isidore's disc-shaped analogy continued to be used through the Middle Ages by authors clearly favouring a spherical Earth, e.g. the 9th century bishop Rabanus Maurus who compared the habitable part of the northern hemisphere (Aristotle's northern temperate clime) with a wheel, imagined as a slice of the whole sphere.

edit
Selected biography 6

Portal:Maps/Selected biography/6

Hipparchus

Hellenistic
period.
Hipparchus was born in Nicaea (now
Iznik, Turkey), and probably died on the island of Rhodes. He is known to have been a working astronomer at least from 147 BC to 127 BC. Hipparchus is considered the greatest astronomical observer and, by some, the greatest overall astronomer of antiquity. He was the first Greek to develop quantitative and accurate models for the motion of the Sun and Moon. With his solar and lunar theories and his numerical trigonometry, he was probably the first to develop a reliable method to predict solar eclipses. His other achievements include the discovery of precession, the compilation of the first star catalogue of the western world, and, probably, the invention of the astrolabe
.

edit
Selected biography 7

Portal:Maps/Selected biography/7

Eratosthenes of Cyrene

map of the world
based on the available geographical knowledge of the era.
Eratosthenes studied in Alexandria and claimed to have done so for some years in
Zenodotos, in that post. He made several important contributions to mathematics and science, and was a good friend to Archimedes. Around 255 BC he invented the armillary sphere, which was widely used until the invention of the orrery in the 18th century
.

edit
Selected biography 8

Portal:Maps/Selected biography/8

Possible rendering of Anaximander's world map

Thales. He succeeded him and became the second master of that school where he counted Anaximenes and Pythagoras
amongst his pupils.
Anaximander was one of the earliest Greek thinkers at the start of the
apeiron) was the source of all things. He created a map of the world that contributed greatly to the advancement of geography. He was also involved in the politics
of Miletus as he was sent as a leader to one of its colonies.

edit
Selected biography 9

Portal:Maps/Selected biography/9

Reconstruction of Hecataeus' map

Celtic people
.
Some have credited Hecataeus with a work entitled Ges Periodos ("Travels round the Earth" or "World Survey"), a point-to-point coastal survey. One on Europe, is essentially a periplus of the Mediterranean, reaching as far north as Scythia. The other book, on Asia, is arranged similarly to the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea of which a version of the 1st century CE survives. The descriptive matter was accompanied by a map, based upon Anaximander’s map of the earth.

edit
Selected biography 10

Portal:Maps/Selected biography/10

Gunnlaugsson's 1844 map of Iceland

cartographer
. The only studied mathematician in Iceland in the 19th century, Björn was isolated from the academic community in Europe, and the intellectual environment made him turn to the didactics and the applications of mathematics, and also to philosophy.
For the Literary Society of Iceland, he surveyed the country from 1831 to 1843. The results of his work were published in a
Légion d'honneur
in 1859.

edit
Selected biography 11

Portal:Maps/Selected biography/11

Matthew Fontaine Maury

educator
.
He was nicknamed
ocean currents led him to advocate his theory of the Northwest Passage, as well as the hypothesis that an area in the ocean near the North Pole
is occasionally free of ice.

edit
Selected biography 12

Portal:Maps/Selected biography/12

Captain Matthew Flinders

A Voyage To Terra Australis
.
Flinders' name is now associated with many geographical features and places in Australia in addition to Flinders Island, in Bass Strait. His proposal for the use of iron bars to be used to compensate for the magnetic deviations caused by iron on board a ship resulted in them being known as Flinders bars

edit
Selected biography 13

Portal:Maps/Selected biography/13

James Cook's 1775 Chart of Newfoundland

Captain
cartographer. Ultimately rising to the rank of Captain in the Royal Navy, Cook was the first to map Newfoundland prior to making three voyages to the Pacific Ocean during which he achieved the first European contact with the eastern coastline of Australia, the European discovery of the Hawaiian Islands, and the first recorded circumnavigation
of New Zealand.
Cook accurately charted many areas and recorded several islands and coastlines on Europeans' maps for the first time. His achievements can be attributed to a combination of seamanship, superior surveying and cartographic skills, courage in exploring dangerous locations to confirm the facts, an ability to lead men in adverse conditions, and boldness both with regard to the extent of his explorations and his willingness to exceed the instructions given to him by the Admiralty.

edit
Selected biography 14

Portal:Maps/Selected biography/14

Nicolaas Witsen's Map of Tartary

States-General, administrator of the VOC and extraordinary-ambassador extraordinaris to the English court. Witsen was an authority on shipbuilding
and his books on the subject are important sources on Dutch shipbuilding in the 17th century.
Nicolaes Witsen was the son of Cornelis Jan Witsen, mayor of Amsterdam, head bailiff and administrator of the Dutch West India Company. Witsen published the first map of Siberia, and in 1692 a treatise titled "Noord en Oost Tartaryen", describing Siberia and the surrounding areas.

edit
Selected biography 15

Portal:Maps/Selected biography/15

World map from Ortelius' Theatrum Orbis Terrarum

Ortelius family of Augsburg
.
Beginning as a map-engraver, in 1547 he entered the Antwerp
Lorraine and Poitiers, he seems to have been attracted, largely by Mercator’s influence, towards the career of a scientific geographer; in particular he now devoted himself, at his friend’s suggestion, to the compilation of that atlas, or Theatrum Orbis Terrarum (Theatre of the World), by which he became famous
.

edit
Selected biography 16

Portal:Maps/Selected biography/16

Gerardus Mercator

Mercator chart
named after him.
Despite his fame as a cartographer, Mercator's main source of income came through his craftmanship of mathematical instruments. Mercator's own independent map-making only began when he produced a map of Palestine in 1537. Mercator devised a technique to produce globes, celestial as well as terrestrial, by techniques of relative mass production. Twenty-two such pairs of Mercator globes have survived.

edit
Selected biography 17

Portal:Maps/Selected biography/17

A "Romweg" map by Erhard Etzlaub

geodesist
, and from a letter dated 1517, that "he had also practicised as a physician for at least four years". His death is noted in as the 15th entry in an official list of 20 people buried between December 20, 1531 and February 21, 1532.
On occasion of the Holy Year 1500, when many pilgrims were expected to go to Rome, he designed his famous "Rom-Weg" map, a 41 x 29 cm wood engraving in stereographic projection of app. scale 1:5,6 mio., the earliest printed road map of central Europe. It is, as all of Etzlaub's maps, "South-up". Distances between cities can be computed by dotted lines, where a one-dot-step means one German Mile (7400m). If the prints were coloured, they show political regions, too.

edit
Selected biography 18

Portal:Maps/Selected biography/18

Piri Reis' map of Europe, the Mediterranean Sea, and North Africa

Piri Reis (full name Hadji Muhiddin Piri Ibn Hadji Mehmed) was an Ottoman-Turkish admiral and cartographer born between 1465 and 1470 in Gallipoli on the Aegean coast of Turkey.
He is primarily known today for his maps and charts collected in his Kitab-ı Bahriye (Book of Navigation), a book which contains detailed information on navigation as well as extremely accurate charts describing the important ports and cities of the Mediterranean Sea. He gained fame as a cartographer when a small part of his first world map (prepared in 1513) was discovered in 1929 at Topkapı Palace in Istanbul. The most surprising aspect was the presence of the Americas on an Ottoman map, making it the first Turkish map ever drawn of the Americas.

edit
Selected biography 19

Portal:Maps/Selected biography/19

Ruysch's 1507 map of the world

Johannes Ruysch was an explorer, cartographer, astronomer, manuscript illustrator and painter from the Low Countries who produced a famous map of the world: the second oldest known printed representation of the New World. This Ruysch map was published and widely distributed in 1507.
In old documents Ruysch was sometimes called a Fleming or German, but he was likely born in Utrecht in the current
Geographia, an atlas published in Rome
.

edit
Selected biography 20

Portal:Maps/Selected biography/20

Amerigo Vespucci

Amerigo Vespucci (March 9, 1454 - February 22, 1512) was an Italian merchant, explorer and cartographer. He played a senior role in two voyages which explored the east coast of South America between 1499 and 1502. On the second of these voyages he discovered that South America extended much further south than before known by the Europeans. This convinced him that this land was part of a new continent.
Vespucci's voyages became widely known in Europe after two accounts attributed to him were published between 1502 and 1504. In 1507, Martin Waldseemüller produced a world map on which he named the new continent "America" after Vespucci's first name, Amerigo. In an accompanying book, Waldseemüller published one of the Vespucci accounts, which led to criticism that Vespucci was trying to usurp Christopher Columbus's glory.

edit
Selected biography 21

Portal:Maps/Selected biography/21

Captain George Comer

Captain George Comer (April 1858 – 1937) was considered the most famous American whaling captain of Hudson Bay, and the world's foremost authority on Hudson Bay Inuit in the early 20th century.
Comer was a
sealer, ethnologist, cartographer, author, and photographer. He made 14 Arctic and three Antarctic voyages in his lifetime. These expeditions (ca. 1875-1919) commonly began in New London, Connecticut or New Bedford, Massachusetts. Comer's circle of friends and colleagues included other notable explorers of the time, such as Robert Peary and Capt. Frederick Cook, and his mentor, Franz Boas
, the "Father of American Anthropology".

edit
Selected biography 22

Portal:Maps/Selected biography/22

Wright's "Chart of the World on Mercator's Projection"

minute of arc
up to a latitude of 75°. This was the essential step needed to make practical both the making and the navigational use of Mercator charts.
Wright was educated at the
Elizabeth I requested that he carry out navigational studies with a raiding expedition organised by the Earl of Cumberland to the Azores to capture Spanish galleons. The same year, Wright created and published the first world map produced in England and the first to use the Mercator projection since Gerardus Mercator
's original 1569 map.

edit
Selected biography 23

Portal:Maps/Selected biography/23

One of Molyneux's celestial globes

Emery Molyneux was an Elizabethan maker of globes, mathematical instruments and ordnance. His terrestrial and celestial globes, first published in 1592, were the first to be made in England and the first to be made by an Englishman.
Molyneux was known as a
Elizabeth I
. Larger globes were acquired by royalty, noblemen and academic institutions, while smaller ones were purchased as practical navigation aids for sailors and students. The globes were the first to be made in such a way that they were unaffected by the humidity at sea, and they came into general use on ships.

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Portal:Maps/Selected_biography&oldid=1049118227"